Yes. And that ripped open the NZ trade union movement and saw the creation of an alternative to CTU.

But it's certainly difficult to…

I feel it is more correct to say that Unions affiliated to the Council of Trade Unions – one of he funding arms…

Tautoko Angus-

The union movement did not flounder through the 80s, they worked very hard to achieve the election of the 4th Labour government. And then…

Yes, and the same goes for the unions in the…

If I ever manage to write a book about this endless, endless goddamned internet argument from which I can apparently never escape, it will be called: Identity Politics Ruined the Left! How These Dudes Know What’s Really Important And The Rest of Us Should Just Shut Up.

Hear…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZzXqUH-hNk

Tidal wave of guff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDtClJYJBj8

Thatcher – where the Nats and Key get the bullocks on creating an Arsepirational Society.

The conduct of the House – is telling in omparison to the conduct in NZ's parliment.

*morning of April 22

Nor this I think. Elvis kinda lays it on the line his way

http://youtu.be/K-BZIWSI5UQ

Yeah, probably not the guy who just won a Feminist Porn Award for "Friends with Benefits".

...a Mao apologist! Tempted to think he's just trolling, but...

For info:

National Insurance

If…

Just like our electricity companies about to be privatised. How hard is it to remind the public of something that has happened before?

Taxes pay for Civilisation. Time…

But...she already had a son with Denis. Why would she have need to break with the church in order to divorce and sire a heir?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9iu6BfAJ4w

Just catching snippets of it, and I'm struggling to think how an event that momentus would be covered now. Visually, it seems so much…

In the 31 years before Thatcher came to office the [UK] economy grew by about 150%; in the 31 years since, it's grown by little more than 100%

Very well put, the entire post-

But it would have made little difference to an electronic exchange – just a software switch to change the pulse interpreter. It'd make pulse dial from a modem odd though – I wonder if people translated the number, or if modems…

A local example would be the…

What convinced them she was damaged goods was the huge level of opposition to the poll tax, including the biggest riot in…

Heh. that may end up on a teeshirt

*English, not Sacha

Verily. No society, etc.

What is also amazing is that there are people who appear not to have known about these stories. A friend of mine told her story about where she was when the news of Thatcher’s resignation spread. She described a similar story…

Throughout the 1980s, Thatcher colluded with the right-wing dictatorships in South Africa, Iraq, Pakistan, Chile, Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Indonesia and the Philippines. She and her supporters have glossed over…

Neil Kinnock was my kind of Labour leader, a caring, decent and responsible visionary. But he lost because he led a party that always sounded conservative, as if the past Thatcher was sweeping…

It's amazing how many of these stories there are.

He said it was understandable Kiwis did not save as much when they received interest-free student loans and healthcare.

They saw their taxes as an “insurance premium” covering those things. But he said he was not signalling a move to more user-pays.

……

Not at all. I think I agreed with pretty much all of it.

What the print…

The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

Or…

For the print workers, was it rational? A printer now (unless elevated to management) probably works longer for less money than their counterpart in the 1970s. Journalists maybe had a few golden years as papers expanded to fill 200…

I'm not so sure about that. Quantitative easing…

I do think that in some cases it was a matter of not even being able to effect rational change.

I mentioned the…

Also: Gabor Toth, thanks for yours.
Some really fascinating material in this thread.

ETA: Thanks to Peter Darlington for this stonking Glenda Jackson speech on Thatcherism .

The fundamental problem that Britain had (and largely still has) was a total lack of community of interest between employers and workers.

The former (drawn in human terms from a public school educated, isolated caste) were concerned to achieve profits with minimal investment…

Blinded by the Right?
Cut loose like a douche, another runner in the night .

To paraphrase Springsteen.

I’ve been thinking about this. I don’t think many of even the strongest critics of her policies would vote to return to some key elements of the post-war consensus. (Much as no one in New Zealand actually wants to go back to…

What was the alternative to what Thatcher did?

They did for a while, but then 5 years ago they disappeared – in the EU, the US and Japan current policy is to inflate…

Oh puh-leeze

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/09/russell-brand-margaret-thatcher

A closure of sorts-

My first exposure to Thatch’s Britain was watching the Toxteth riots on TV. I was being made up for a matinee performance of musical hall songs for local old folks. A teacher sat next to me, pointed out…

Yes, it does. But Thatcher as an…

Especially, yeah, I'm not going to criticise Banks, a man who would have seen the local economy utterly destroyed by a set of deliberate choices made by Thatcher, for his hatred. Fair enough.

Margaret Thatcher has been accused by the Australian foreign minister of having held "unabashedly racist" views after he revealed that the late former British prime minister had warned him of the challenge posed by immigration from Asia.

Bob Carr, who served as premier of New South…

And yet, probably millions of Britons feel some…

My cycle courier friends had pagers. The first to hear the news sent the message “Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out! Out! Out!” – to which the response was…

Yes, please-

The monetarists came in everywhere — and as Rob notes above, at the very least,…

Can we agree that Hebe did not say, imply or endorse anything of the kind?

I do appreciate — and learn from — the differing viewpoints commenters hold: I believe many people desire the same outcomes in politics but their opinions on how to reach…

I don't see much point to further engagement with you on this, Hebe, but it just seemed polite to note I've read your last.

I thought that was more of a sign that the poor and disgruntled were now in prison, or some distant township type area, which wasn't very heartening. I went back to Brixton a year or so ago and noticed that…

wrong bloke

How about you read my posts Craig rather than ascribing all your offended feelings to thingsI have not said or implied? I cannot be alone on PAS in finding your responses to…

Put me down for…

Me too. You did rather feel like The Enemy at the time.

I think I have expressed here before my surprise at finding out what Enoch Powell was all about, instead of just…

And pace Morrissey and the IRA, “freedom fighters” is what you call people who aren’t strenuously trying to murder you and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity at the time. (I wish Our Steve would put as…

(From Russell Brand's piece in The Guardian)

This is why I loathe Maggie Thatcher and all who sailed with her. Brand nails the core dysfunction of her politics and her political style. It is nothing…

Which seems awfully familiar.

I think asking people to be above celebrating her death is failing to acknowledge just how much…

(In the UK parliament, second readings are the key one. They do have a system of "pairing" which may mean that she didn't have to vote because paired with an opponent of the…

Fairness would…

Yeah, he was — and he backed sabotage and even countenanced terrorism as an extreme option. MK was initially a separate group but came to be regarded as the ANC's militant wing.

But…

Interestingly, one mate of mine, a proper leftie, in his heyday all Red Wedge and right-on punch-ups, was melancholy. "I thought I'd be overjoyed, but really it's just... another one bites the dust..."…

Of course they were considered terrorists (and traitors to boot) – their actions weren't called the American Revolution because it tested really well with the focus group.

Must ... not ... Godwin ...

I was talking about MK, of which (Wikipedia at least claims =) Mandela was a founding member.

Perhaps we should get this right. The exact quote, given at a…

Banks might like to show some fucking decency and remember his partner is going to be visiting his grave in a few months, Perhaps I should show my…

Franklin Roosevelt mercifully averted this, although it took WW2 for a full recovery. Weimar Germany, on the other hand, was probably the most…

Ashes to ashes...

Which bit? “Twatcock” is the PAS generic double-or-nothing-gendered insult; “FTW” is apparently “for the win”, as teh yoof put it these days, or so I hear.

Wow.

"Entirely"?

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission called some of the actions of the para-military organisation he founded, and would not denounce, a "gross violation of human rights". Of the 200 civilians who died in its terror, 140 were black.

Just depends who is on which side.

Dict: terrorist
in the modern sense, 1947, especially in reference to Jewish tactics against the British in Palestine — earlier it was used of extremist revolutionaries in Russia (1866); and Jacobins during the French Revolution (1795) — from…

Can and should. The organisation he helped found planted land mines, conducted bombings (inlcuding, for example, shopping centres and bars) and torture. Many (most?) of its civilian death were black.

etc.

One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. No contradiction in this case, in my book, Mandela was entirely justified.

Are the two really contradictory?

But she might rust.

Islander: Annnd, her handshake was boneless

Obviously not one of the bone people.

Won't work for Thatcher, though. The Lady's not for burning.

Ba-doom, tish! Eyethangyewlaydeezangennlemen.

Nah, but the single malt whisky is in pretty good supply... slainte!

Best not come over to the UK for a while, then. It's getting pretty bad here and will get worse before it gets better.

Some people seem to have forgotten what a basket case the…

But I like Polly Toynbee's better. Although it's not her usual turf, I think I think she nails it with some of the economic stuff towards the end.

This is why we have to be careful about gendered insults. They…

Nelson Mandela was a Terrorist.

The Militant Tendency never reached the leadership levels of Labour. The first election Thatcher won was of course lost by the (old right) Callaghan and subsequent elections saw Labour led…

What does that mean? I have seen it before on PAS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgcTvoWjZJU

To be fair I have heard old very camp men sometimes described using that word. But yeah we even made a word expressly for this:

Twatcock FTW.

The main alternative is what just occurred in Cyprus, except more so.

Relevant to the materialist-cultural tension in the left that Danielle alludes to above. Though gendering it, sheesh. :)

Blame must also accrue to the British Labour movement, whose disappearance down the Militant Tendency rabbit-hole played a great part in Thatcher winning successive elections.

They fell prey to the very divisions Thatcher looked to foster. You really had to despair…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6RhWcy41DI

Perhaps that's a 20th Century lesson: don't…

+1. Its interesting reading what the likes of Costello and Loach say of her passing.

If I ever manage to write a book about this endless, endless goddamned internet argument from which…

If you can judge a person by the company they keep … Thatcher’s most important mentor, Keith Joseph.

A vile man who gave speeches about the working-class birth rate threatening “our human stock”. Who, in the wake of riots in Liverpool, proposed a “managed rundown”…

I think one of the things that enabled her to be so successful was that many on the left were more concerned with correct use of language than the physical actions of government. This reached its nadir with Blair,…

I think I prefer discussion that has no name-calling, though.

Would you ever use it to describe a man?

As the pragmatism included the brain fart of floating the New Zealand dollar, yeah, if only there HAD been an alternative.

(btw, thanks for putting me on to that via Twitter last night Mr Brown)

Sorry Russell; surely trout is ungendered?

Matt McCarten was certainly under that impression at the time, and I found a couple of other references that indicated that Douglas was triple-dipping into the public purse during the last term.

Snap. Not sure which was the most dramatic live, that or the Berlin Wall coming down. Neither did I expect to see in my lifetime.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuPrrdRzlxc

Ahem.

(I mean, I agree with your larger point: fuck her and all the mealy-mouthed tributes to her "legacy". But... yeah.)

Are you sure it was all three at once?

Seconded.